tencrush | The awesome Toshiko Sato

That's a really interesting way to look at it, being like a pulp novel. I always thought it was more of Tosh being so keen on someone's undivided attention and common interests that she wouldn't really care what bits came with it. A lot like Suzie I think Tosh just needed someone to talk to, someone to stand beside her and not dismiss her -as she saw Gwen and Owen so readily do, unconsciously or not, with the pendant- but Mary was rather intent on seducing her from the get go XD So maybe a bit of column A with a bit of column B. I wouldn't put it past the writers to have Mary exude some sort of sexy pheromones but not say it directly.

I think it depends on how much you see what Mary does to Tosh as manipulation (one would assume through telepathic knowledge of her mental state) in order to get her into bed. That's pretty much how I saw it, and that immediately brought to mind, for me, associations with Evil Lesbians seducing innocent straight girls.

GBG is squicky as all hell, but I do think Tosh is bi, mainly because it's Torchwood and everyone's more or less bi.

It's just that we are never given any reason, either before or after that episode, to believe that Tosh is anything other than straight. That episode bugs me on so many levels, but it's that level of Mary using Evil Lesbian Manipulation to get Tosh into bed that bothers me the most.

But (partly because Tosh is woefully underwritten) we get very little information on who she fancies. We see her pine after Owen and her relationship with Tommy in TTLM, but that doesn't strike me as enough information to establish her as definitively straight. Though, tbh, part of the reason I prefer to think of her as bi (other than fic purposes, obv) is that it makes GBG marginally less squicky if there's a chance she was attracted to Mary anyway.

Exactly my point, yeah. Seeing her as bi makes that story less gross, but it's really the only reason I'd like to think that she's bi. Just like I liked thinking there was more to Jack/Ianto than sex, because seeing it any other way made it sexual harassment in the workplace for me. But I was wrong about that one, so you never know.

I'm sure the writers were more or less writing along the lines of

louiex's answers, and not really aware of any sort of lesbian negative subtext presented there. I've got her labelled in my head as bi for my own peace of mind, so as far as the Tosh that I write is, that's what she calls herself. I'm not too sure about canon!Tosh. If you take it as a one-time "yeilding to temptation" thing, it is squicky.

The fact that I have no idea how to answer the poll is just a product of TW's cautious approach to characterisation and continuity, I think. Either answer works because they never wanted to cut off a possible future storyline - but really that just means neither answer is remotely satisfying (with added discomfort from defining bisexuality as not-making-your mind-up, instead of qualifying as a genuine active choice).

Greeks... is squicky as all hell, and the Evil Lesbian Converting The Innocent trope is definitely a big part of that, but I didn't get an 'ick, ladyparts!' vibe at the conclusion. They didn't follow it up in any interesting or meaningful way to redeem it either - but then this is Torchwood we're talking about.

The really fail-y thing about that episode, to me, was making Mary evil in the first place. It would have been pretty interesting to have Tosh fall in love with an alien in a female form. Maybe if Mary had initially wanted to get her transporter back, but found that she loved Tosh and wanted to stay with her... that would have been such an awesome ongoing relationship storyline. Plus, I thought Tosh deserved to have someone care about her romantically who wasn't a frozen soldier or a memory alien.

We don't really know the "gender" of Mary's alien form, but she presented as a human woman in her relationship with other people, so for all purposes, Tosh found herself with a woman, which raised orientation issues on her end. It could have also raised the concept of discrimination - I could see Owen or others not trusting Mary, knowing that she wasn't really human. (We know Gwen would probably give her the benefit of the doubt and Jack's had sex and probably relationships with aliens, so why are all of the aliens on TW such evil assholes, or even if they're not intentionally evil, they're harmful to humanity?)

Missed opportunity for an interesting story, IMO.

I can't even answer that poll because nothing in the show indicates the answer. GBG is the only time Tosh shows same-sex attraction in the show though. She seems pretty open to it too. I think her sexual response to Mary is genuine. Whether she'd label herself as bi as a result is an open question. It's more fun to think of her as bi, so that's what I prefer, but I don't think there's any evidence one way or the other. Unless you take her more numerous relationships with men to mean she was basically straight. So, do you see Jack as the Manly Man saving Tosh? There doesn't seem to be any sexual subtext to their relationship in GBG.

No, I don't particularly see Jack that way, it's just that the whole storyline has those connotations for me and I wonder if that's because I am aware of the trope or if it's a more general thing. It's hard to look at something like this story and imagine you're unaware of the trope and see what you would make of it in that case.

I had never considered the pulp novel aspect of the episode.

I think Tosh would view herself as heterosexual. Now who she really is, is open for debate. We know nothing of her prior sexual experiences and we see her pining for Owen.

I see her as someone who has fairly naive ideas about relationships and hasn't really explored her sexuality, so I don't see the storyline as squicky so much as someone who has never considered a same sex relationship choosing to try that option.

So while I picked the second choice, I don't think she was 'drugged' into having sex with a woman. I think the opportunity presented itself, and she thought 'why not.'

Didn't they say that originally in the script the alien wasn't even a female and that they changed the gender after they casted the actress for Mary?

I may be wrong.

Inconsistent characterizations aside, I'm tempted to say that Tosh wouldn't have labelled herself for sleeping with a female alien and the others wouldn't care.

But that, you know, were Torchwood good old days...

I think she'd label herself straight, but is probably bi.

I don't actually remember any other Tosh likes girls lines but she definitely likes Owen and Tommy, Mary on the other hand is kinda evil. I have her label herself as het and that's what she'll tell her probably very traditional mother, but if she's as smart as we all know her as being, she'll think of herself as bi if that makes sense at all.

I think the key exchange is this one:
TOSHIKO: So... I'm shagging a woman and an alien.
MARY: Which is worse?
TOSHIKO: Well, I know which one my parents would say.

That makes me think she's either had previous lesbian experiences or had least had the inclination, but felt she had to keep it repressed/closeted. We've seen her attachment to her family in CJH and especially her closeness to her mother in EOD and Fragments. My feeling is that Tosh is very much tied up in being a "good girl" and not doing anything that would embarass or humiliate her family, or interfere with their love for her which she feels being out as a lesbian or even a bisexual would.

So while Mary was easily preying on her need for love and affection, especially in terms of Gwen and Owen's blatant sexuality, I don't think she was "turning" a completely straight girl gay with her evil lesbian/alien wiles.

Hope you don't mind my commenting here. I feel this is a fairly uncontroversial topic, one that I find very interesting.

Just as a follow up, this is also the episode where Jack tells his Vincent/Vanessa story, which many people have indicated they found squicksome in terms of Jack seeming to have negative feelings about a transexual and he also appears to be equating Vincent's strange behaviour prior to transition with Tosh's.

You're right, I'd forgotten about that one. That was actually one of the things that made me feel so squicky about the story, this implication of Jack's that Tosh had "turned" somehow.

I think the episode looks worse in retrospect. When I first saw it, we were still in the first series which had a marginally lighter tone and we were sort of being sold on the idea of "everybody's bi." That was dramatically pulled back in the 2nd series, and even moreso in the 3rd.

As I'm thinking it through now, given my real aversion to what happens to Tosh in Adam, it's hard to see how Mary is that much different. They're both playing on the same deep-seated needs and in both cases Tosh seems like a rape victim who blames herself. The fact that she doesn't want to let go of the memories in Adam is heartbreaking and deeply disturbing if you take it on a feminist level.

I think it would have done Tosh's character a world of good, if we could have gotten ONE bi-sexual throw-away line in the 2nd series, or if she'd given Martha the eye or something. I still see her as a repressed bisexual, but I wish TPTB hadn't backed away so blatantly from most of the "everybody is bi" theme and let her be not quite so repressed.

It definitely looks worse in retrospect. For one thing, at the time I assumed it wasn't going to be basically all Torchwood has to say about women being attracted to other women.

Rusty has issues with how he portrays queer people, including a tendency to not do that well with ones who are not gay men. He's not lesbian-friendly, he's not trans-friendly, and he's only intermittently any good at handling bisexuality.

He's also not particularly mother friendly, at least based on the way he writes them for the companions.

The big question with Torchwood is exactly how much imput he had on the episodes he didn't write. Greeks was written by Toby Whithouse, who also wrote School Reunion for Dr. Who. I love that episode (Anthony Head!) but the whole bitch-fight aspect of the Rose/Sarah Jane relationship is less than pleasant to sit through.

He's not particularly any-woman-older-than-late-twenties friendly full stop. (Except CoE, funnily enough, there all the women were suddenly made of win, every last one of them)

There's a subset of Doctor/Rose shippers who keep writing, again and again, the scene where Convenient Magic Of Some Sort ensures that Rose will never grow old (and will either never die, or die exactly when the Doctor does). It fits far too well with the Rustyverse take on women and aging.

Don't get me started on Donna's feminine wiles, that's the moment I really started taking Rusty's ageism personally.

like a rape victim who blames herself
Yeah, this, definitely. I always wanted to like Tosh more, because she's geeky and smart and I SHOULD like her more than anyone, really, if you're talking on a who-would-you-identify-with kind of level, but there was always this air of vicimisation and weakness about her that made me really unhappy, and I wish they hadn't taken her character there.

No, of course not, why would I mind? It's a topic I keep coming across in my travels reading about all this fridging the queer business surrounding Ianto's death, GBG has been labelled in a few places as the most blatantly homophobic message Torchwood has sent, and I wondered if it was generally accepted that this incident was an abberation on Tosh's part, and thus would fit in with that EvilLesbian trope or if that's a thing that's read into it by anyone who happens to be familiar with this genre of pulp,

There's definite massive messy issues going on in there. Especially as it's the only storyline that could really be seen as a lesbian romance, and the nearest other alternatives are pheromone-drugged girl-on-girl kissing which everyone got voyeuristic about, and a murderer kissing her hostage who she was in the process of killing.

Part of the reason I saw it as more Tosh being bi was because of some stuff on the Torchwood website (which other people are not obliged to consider canon or incorporate into their personal interpretation, but I liked in this case), where she wrote a letter to her more understanding aunt making it clear that she saw herself as a bit bi. And while I saw manipulation, I wasn't coming at it from the same pulp framework, and didn't see that as negating the choice and attraction bits (it didn't seem to be that kind of manipulation, and Tosh is a bit older than the innocent young girl types).

Don't know.

What annoyed me with Tosh was that two out of the three episodes where she was one of the main characters. GBG, Captain Jack Harkness and To The Last Man. It's about Tosh being romantically involved. Couldn't they have written something else for a brainy if shy female?

My pet hate moment in that ep is Gwen patronising her at the end by telling her "love suits you" makes me gag just remembering it.

Poll results are interesting, I voted for straight as I think there is no other evidence in canon for anything else. I do think it was written as poor lonely misunderstood Tosh is feeling awful because the man she loves is shagging the new girl that all the men overlook her for. It's an old trope and I think easy to relate to (well I could, gosh it reminds me of high school)

Eugh, yeah, and she's just been fucking Owen and being all "eww boots" in her head and then she's all smiles and "love suits you." I don't get how we're supposed to be liking this woman, I really don't.

In hindsight, after the ugliness of CoE and its treatment of homosexuality and bisexuality, "Greeks" does look primarily like an Evil!Lesbian story (CoE seems to have done that to a lot of the TW canon......).

But, to me, the original storyline, untainted by Rusty's revisionist work, hinted of the idea in TW of fluid sexuality. Mary was evil--but atypical of her species, a criminal; the implication was that a normal representative would be extremely beautiful and attractive, qualities Mary exploited.

Tosh always came across as very repressed--but not wanting to be so. Therefore, she would think of herself as hetereosexual, because that would be, by her thinking, the norm. But the original TW was about questioning assumptions and norms and opening one's mind to possibilities. Hence, Tosh's willingness to experiment--but also her upset at crossing her own preconceived boundaries....exacerbated by the fact that Mary was manipulating/using her.

If I erase CoE from my mind, "Greeks" becomes part of an overall message to free one's mind and overcome "quaint little categories"....post CoE, with its anti-gay subtext, "Greeks" also promotes stereotyping.

How sad.

I answered with what I'd like to believe (Tosh is bi), but based on what the show gave us (ONE episode in which any of it is even alluded to, regarding Tosh) the second choice is probably true.

And I'm not really sure that I agree with the 'everyone in Torchwood is bi' theory. GBG is the only reference to Tosh being anything but straight. DayOne is the only time we see Gwen kiss a woman (thanks to alien pheromones). Aside from his occasional crude joke, the only evidence that Owen is other than straight is in his 'date rape' moment - and I don't know why everyone sees that as a threesome about to happen, I took his kissing The Boyfriend as a distraction so he'd escape a beating long enough to catch a cab and leave them both behind. *shrugs*

Jack, of course, is bi-omni-whatever. And I was convinced that Ianto was bi, at least until the whole Jack-sexual episode, which I'm still not convinced was adequately resolved in CoE.

I took his kissing The Boyfriend as a distraction so he'd escape a beating long enough to catch a cab and leave them both behind
I know, right? I still don't understand the threesome theory and I still don't see it when I watch it.

I said bi mostly because of Gwen's snog scene in Day One. When Owen called everybody over, Tosh looked just as turned on and distracted as Jack and Owen were. And I feel that if she were normally straight she would have been the first one to actually move to get Gwen away from the crazy sex gas alien. I mean, she was the first to suggest stopping it, but she wasn't moving if there was hot snoggage on screen. Or something.

"she wasn't moving if there was hot snoggage on screen"

But you could argue that it was just a 'hur hur, look at THAT,' almost adolescent, type fascination, as opposed to a genuine sexual interest. And, unlike Owen, Tosh isn't the type to throw insults at things she finds surprising, or even upsetting. Besides which, she's essentially a scientist - not one to miss an opportunity to observe 'new and interesting' behavior in others. ;)

(But I do like the suggestion. I'd forgotten that bit.)

I suppose that is true.

And I suppose that, if Owen's pheromone spray, Mary's involvement, and Adam's manipulation is any indication, sex-seeking aliens aren't all that uncommon for the Torchwood team. It could have just as easily been a "Wow, sexy alien times on her first day..." reaction as anything else.

Yes, it reminded me of those films of the (I think) 70s where innocents are corrupted by sexy evol lesbian vampires.

that... was ONE of the main things i disliked about GBG

i can't answer the poll, though, b/c my option would be: tosh does NOT label herself (but that may be just WHAT I WANT as opposed to WHAT IS)

I chose "Tosh would label herself as bisexual" due to her comment about her family thinking that being with a woman is worse than being with an alien. It gave me the impression that Mary wasn't the first time Tosh had been attracted to a woman. Also early on there seemed to be the attitude that everyone in Torchwood is bisexual.

However, I admit this is weak evidence as this attitude seemed to change in later episodes. Gwen's only same gender experience is "under the influence". Owen's was "get out of a jam". So the "everyone is bisexual in Torchwood" argument is weakened and Tosh never again shows any interest in another woman.

I am not a fan of pulp novels, but I am film fan so I did catch the "old production code compliant story of the innocent woman corrupted by evil lesbian" vibe. I didn't think much of it at the time because I assumed we'd see more female characters in lesbian relationships.

via

torchwood_three

I assumed we'd see more female characters in lesbian relationships
Yeah, I notice that didn't really happen, did it? Huh.

Owen's was "get out of a jam"

Although on another hand here, why was spraying himself with the pheromones his first idea...? ;)

I've noticed that Gwen definitely seems to be an exception to the whole "Everyone is bi!" thing. With Owen, it's really up for interpretation, but with Gwen, there's no willing kissing, dating, sleeping with, or expressing attraction to other women.

Considering the way she ogles Gwen and Carys making out in ep 2, I'd say bi.

Like, when Gwen was making out with the alien in the cell...and then it looked like that Tosh found Mary very beautiful in her alien form, I think she's a pansexual.

Yeah, it is disappointing that they went with the Evil and Dangerous storyline, though I'm still not quite sure she's Evil in addition to Dangerous, cause, her and the heart thing is a biological imperative right? ...and the pendant has a tendency to give its wearer a dark view of humanity eh?

I do like that scene here the end, where in the background, you can see Ianto and Tosh talking in another room. Ah, the "Jack killed out evil girlfriends club". If counting Adam, +1. If counting Owen and Suzie, also +1. ...and though Jack was not responsible, Owen was certainly mad at Jack when the woman he's engaged to dies, in a "you harbringer of doom" kindaway.

I'm actually much less squicked by this, then Adam, because Tosh has consent in this, she messed up, but it's her choice, and this is the kinda storylines often given to male nerds.

Have you SEEN Mary? Especially in the purple outfit she was wearing at the end? Plus the scene at the coffee house? Let's see, pretty girl flattering you over your act of bravery, and more importantly, someone who bonds with you, show you wonderful new things, listens to you.

From the way Mary is looking at Tosh, I think Mary did find Tosh attractive, she's certainly enjoying earth life.

What's more, we actually never seen Mary's story disproved. Her sinister part was that she eats hearts when she's hungry...and she stole the original woman's body...BUT, she can still be a political prisoner, that soldier shot first, etc etc. Her fears of Torchwood not being nice to aliens can be genuine after all the human thoughts she had hurt. So Jack sending Mary to the sun? Yeah, Tosh have reasons to be really shocked over that. I don't think it'll be the last time she talks to Ianto about it.

I always assumed Tosh was bi, based on the "Day One" scene combined with the general bi-friendliness already established via Jack and Owen. GBG confirmed it for me; she was uncomfortable with being the center of anyone's attention, but unsurprised and unconcerned about it being a woman's attention, and her line about her parents struck me as someone who's spent some time thinking about her parents' reactions to her sexuality before.

I didn't see anything in GBG that would make me think that was her first time with a woman, nor did I see anything that would suggest Mary was manipulating her into something she didn't want to do anyway, much less actively controlling or telepathically influencing her. The pendant allowed them to read minds; it was never suggested that it allowed them to influence another's thoughts. Yes, Mary took advantage of Tosh's vulnerability, but that vulnerability was pre-existing and could have been taken advantage of the same way by any smarmy human guy; Mary's femaleness was irrelevant, and her alienness was relevant only as the motive for targeting her. A human with a different motive could have done the same.

I will agree that it was "generally not the sort of thing Tosh would normally do", hence her discomfort during the bedroom scene, but I always read the "it" there as being "sleeping with someone you've only just met", not sleeping with a woman.

The awesome Toshiko Sato

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Wasn't she looking at Gwen in Day One?

...and I don't think Tosh was drugged

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